Network Management Tools

Every network manager must keep a set of tools handy for performing routine activities like network monitoring and management, hardware troubleshooting, and inventory. Here's one such collection that you'll find pretty useful

Thursday, January 03, 2008

There are certain things which one cannot neglect while managing a network, such as security, software/hardware failure, and change in inventory. In order to properly manage the above-mentioned aspects, one has to keep a set of tools.

A good set of tools for a network manager are the equivalent of a Swiss army knife with a soldier. They come in handy when you are in trouble. So, here's one such collection that you might find useful. In this article we will detail you how to use them.

Network Monitoring
The only way to ensure that you don't end up with unknown hardware/software failures is to monitor them regularly and replace or rectify the faulty machinery before it stops working. Additionally, you also need to keep track of users in your network and their activity. Following are two tools that can help you with  monitoring.

NTop
This tool captures data going through your Internet gateway and presents it in very comprehensive graphs and charts. With NTop you can monitor the total bandwidth usage, protocol level and user level view of bandwidth usage, etc. NTop can be deployed on either Windnows or Linux. But the key point to keep in mind is that you have to install NTop on the gateway for best results. So, whatever OS your gateway is running, get that version of NTop.

A detailed view of all systems on a network with their bandwidth consumption, protocols, and applications usage

Installation of NTop is child's play. For the Windows version, simply run the installer and hit 'next' for a couple of times. Once installed, you will see a NTop Xtra icon just beside the clock at the system bar. Double click on the icon and a Window opens up.

Here click on the 'Start NTop Service' option and then on the launch NTop option. An IE Window will open up with the address http://localhost:3000. This is the location from where you can access the NTop page in future. The system is very much self explanatory and you can use it without any hassles.

OpenNMS showing the status of services on a machine. Red indicates error and green indicates healthy services

To install NTop on Linux, all you have to do is go to the terminal as root 'assuming you are using a Fedora Linux distro' and type 'yum install NTop.' It will get downloaded. To start it you need to type 'service NTop start' and access it from a web browser using the same address as Windows one: http://localhost:3000

OpenNMS
OpenNMS is an Open Source Network Management System, which runs on any OS that supports Java and Tomcat. This software is capable of SNMP service polling, data collection, notification, and event management.

Using this software you can monitor your crucial servers and individual services that are running on them like HTTP, FTP, MySQL; that too in an agent-less environment.

The installation of OpenNMS used to be pretty tedious, and you had to configure quite a few components such as Tomcat and Java to make it work. But now we have something called an OpenNMS Appliance. All you have to do is copy it from this month's DVD and run it with VMware player.

We have talked about using and installing OpenNMS in our June issue of PCQuest. You can access the article from http://pcquest.ciol.com/content/enterprise/2007/107062903.asp.

Hardware Inventory
The next most important thing besides monitoring your network is monitoring you assets. Keeping track of hardware/software and tracking their changes is very important for any organization. This not only prevents theft or misuse of resources, but also keeps track of faulty equipment and generates alerts in case of failure. Below, we will look at two software with which you can do such tracking with ease.

To submit an error with SysAid go to its homepage, select the type of error from the menu, fill in your comment, and submit

SysAid
It's a complete asset management and IT helpdesk management software. With this software and accompanied agent one can keep track of all the hardware and software components of all the machines which have the agent running.

The added benefit of the application is that it can also be used as a helpdesk system and users can lodge their complaints directly from the same agent in a simple wizard manner. The installation of the SysAid server is pretty simple and straightforward.

All you have to do is to start the installer and follow the wizard. The only value you have to provide in the wizard is the mail server and reply to address and the port on which the SysAid portal will be accessible.

Installation of the agent is even simpler. All you have to do is to manually install the agent setup file on the server machine once. The only thing you will be asked while this installation is the IP address of the server and the serial number of the agent installation file. If you have the free version of the software then the serial number will be provided free of cost but this setup will only be usable for 100 users or assets or for 3 administrators.

For bigger setups, you need to purchase the full version of the application from http://www.ilient.com/helpdesk-software-prices-hosted.htm. It will cost you around INR 20 per user or asset.

Once you are through with the setup you can push the agent file to client machines from the same server by using agent interface. All you will require here is either username or password of all the client machines or all the client machines have to be a part of a central domain controller.

We had discussed this tool in great detail in our JAN 2007 issue. You can access it from http://pcquest.ciol.com/ content/ search/showarticle.asp?a tid=92893.

Alchemy Eye
This is an application that keeps an eye on server availability and hardware components. In case of any failure or change in hardware components, it immediately sends alerts to the administrator via email or phone (SMS).

Alchemy Eye can tell you which applications and hardware are installed on all workstations on your network

The installation is very easy and all you have to do is to follow the installation wizard. Once the installation is done, start the application, go to the File menu and click on the 'Scan Network' option. Once the Scan Network wizard appears, provide the IP range of machines you want to detect. So, for instance, if your network address is 192.168.1.0 and you have 100 machines in an IP sequence, then you will do a search from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.0.100.

Once you have provided the IP range, select the services for which you want to do a scan from the bottom of the Window and click on the start button to initiate the search process.

This could take a while depending upon how many machines are on the network. Once the scan is done it will list all the live machines in your network. It will also list the services running on each machine, as well as the OS.

Once you scan your network with LANSurveyor, it creates a map of your network with all devices and links

You can then set a watch on the desired services for the machines. ICMP-ping is enabled for all the machines by default. Once you are done with this, press on OK and the main Window will appear. From the main Window you can see the status of the machines and watched services.

On a mouse rollover movement you will be able to see the descriptions of errors on machines if any. If you want to drill down and see what all applications and hardware are there in a given machine, then just right click on the machine's IP and click on the 'View Computer Inventory.' Here a wizard will open. Follow the wizard with default settings and an agent will get installed on the client machine. Now you will be able to see all the errors, hardware, software, etc in the machine.

Network Management
Monitoring is useful but what do you do after monitoring the information, issues, and errors? The next step is to manage this information in a better way and manage the faulty devices as well. So below are two software that can help.

LANSurveyor
This is one of its own kind and a feature rich application for mapping your network. The software is available for download as a full version 30 days trial. You can get it from http://neon.com.

To use, first copy the software from this month's CD and run the setup wizard. The installation is very simple and doesn't require any special knowledge. Just follow the wizard and it will be done in minutes. Once it's done run the application and it will start up a wizard.

Here you have to provide details of your network subnet. For example if you have a class C network 192.168.0.x, then you will most likely want to search all the machines between 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254. Provide the values to the system and also tell the number of hops you want LANSurveyor to look for.

At the bottom of the page you can even define which types of nodes you want to discover on your network such as ICPM response nodes, NetBIOS clients, SIP clients, etc.

Once selected, click on the OK button to start the search process. Depending on the size of your network and the class of your subnet the search will take from a few minutes to a few hours. Once the search is done you will be presented with a map of your network with links and connections. In this map you can even select and create alerts for error on any machine or link response. You can even purchase and download the neon agent from their website and install them on your nodes to get a complete inventory and response detail of your devices.

Anindaya Roy and Vijay Chauhan

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